In Still Life Analysis II: The Island, I-Hsuen Chen continues his photographic survey of garbage and foreign objects started in his previous work Still Life Analysis, with a further focus on collections of vagrants’ household objects beneath Civic Boulevard. For the artist, the underside of Civic Boulevard resembles a subtropical island hot spot with its artificial stones and potted plants decor. On this island, in the respite grooming by authorities, “citizens” carry with them “objects” that temporarily occupy spaces that could be called home. Real estate advertisements in all imaginable shapes and forms huddle close by. Here, a piece of property is termed an “object.”‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍The Real Estate Poem is a collection of these written information and slogans in the advertisements. Sales details such as project names and locations are then eliminated. What is left of these commercial messages takes the form of poetry. The “found poems” laud the modularized ideal of beautiful living (marketing allure) and depict Taipei citizens’ collective yearning for home and lifestyle (consumer demand). A shift in the viewing perspective of the photographs occurs when pages of the poem are reversed, echoing the experience of the island “citizens” under the expressway. The images and texts describe the features of the two juxtaposed home-places. Between satire and mourning, the work is a paradoxical epitaph or an ironic allegory.‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍Through collecting and documenting various “objects,” an attempt is made to situate oneself on the thin line separating the private and the public, and to question the nature of property in constant, fluctuating relationships of occupation, re-occupation, and elimination.